A review by museoffire
The Dirty South by John Connolly

3.0

This was an interesting addition to the Charlie Parker catalog. I've spoken at length about the gradual decline of this series. I can't imagine it's especially easy to tell 18 stories about anything much less a man who traffics in death, and not just any kind of death. Charlie Parker is an old testament avenging angel who has battled the kind of killers who are so evil we wish they weren't human even while we realize that only humans are capable of the kind of depravity they engage in. Writing about that sort of thing just has to weigh on a person after awhile. And to do it with the sort of literary gifts John Connolly has must be even harder.

I was trying to explain to my husband why I love his writing so much and it's very difficult to articulate that you enjoy reading about people being flayed alive with a paring knife because "the language is really lovely" but I don't know what else to say. He makes the absolute worst kind of torture sound like a love sonnet. Fortunately we've been married for awhile so he embraced my particular brand of insanity awhile ago.

But even that's been suffering. And again I get it! Maintaining something like for 2 books let alone 18 must be just utterly exhausting.

So I've been cutting him some slack and slogging through whats become somewhat formulaic writing and unfortunately formulaic plotting. Charlie gets wind of a gross out murder that's got some sort of supernatural fumes wafting around it, gets Louis and Angel (actual murder husbands who seem scary but are probably the best people you could ever hope to meet) to do some damage, gets on the wrong side of actual law enforcement and probably just misses getting to the truth of this weird amorphous evil that's been chasing him for what seems like my entire life at this point.

However, this time around Connolly opted to go back in time to the days when Mr. Parker had barely begun his search for The Traveling Man, a faceless evil who murdered his wife and young daughter. Aided by higher ups and certain contacts in various arms of law enforcement Charlie began his search to destroy this monster by following any crime or murder that even resembled what was done to his family and so finds himself as this book begins in the festering armpit known as Burdon County, Arkansas. Three women have died. Black women and thus unworthy of much notice from a police force in the pocket of a local family bound and determined to lock in a deal that may finally raise Burdon County from the impoverished pit of despair its been mired in for generations. But there are few good people left who want to see justice done and though it takes him away from his hunt Charlie can't seem to resist the stronger need to help those who know one else will.

Connolly's been playing around with the whole "one suffering for the greater good" thing for awhile now but it feels especially relevant in this book. He eschews all of the supernatural stuff in favor of harsher, darker truths like the evils of the meth trade and the havoc true poverty wrecks on a community. His prose is much starker than its been before. The words are less flowery and seemingly chosen more for how hard they'll wound than how pleasing they'll be to the reader.

It's also interesting to see Charlie at such a crucial time in his development as a character. His rage and grief are cold and raw and that's really all there is to him. He simply has no interest in the world or the people in it. The fear he invokes isn't so much because of what he says or does, its more because you just sort of know what he's capable of. There's something in his silence that's infinitely more frightening than his fists.

I'm not quite used to having to work out whodunnit in a Charlie Parker story. Its usually pretty obvious but unlike other novels we don't spend much time with the killer in this one. In that sense (and here's where the three stars come in) it's a pretty pedestrian revenge tale that isn't too hard to work out and isn't terribly satisfying. I think this might have more to do with the fact that Connolly's earliest killers; the Traveling Man, Caleb Kyle and god help me those frickin' fundamentalist twins who murdered people with WASPS FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!!!! still give me nightmares. It's kind of hard to get scarier than those guys and frankly I suppose I prefer that Connolly hasn't really tried.

We even get a brief visit with my favorite odd couple Angel and Louis who's loyalty to Charlie is something to behold. It's pretty cool to see them in their prime even if it feels a bit like pandering to the fans. Then again I would have been genuinely upset to go a whole book without seeing them.

I still don't feel the visceral, bone numbing thrill I used to get from his books but this was a good read. Not a great read, but a good one. An interesting prologue for one of the more fascinating detectives every written at any rate.